


All the Right Things

by lovekernel



Category: Casualty (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-08
Updated: 2018-08-08
Packaged: 2019-06-24 01:02:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,589
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15618978
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lovekernel/pseuds/lovekernel
Summary: Ruby meets a friendly face towards the end of the worst day of her life





	All the Right Things

**Author's Note:**

> I wish this scene actually happened. Thanks for reading!

Ruby left Daisy alone in the room she died after the machines were switched off, totally spent. She had to go see Jan in her office but she needed a minute to recover. She stood outside the door and took a moment to clean herself up, wiping her eyes with her hand and her nose against her sleeve. Taking a deep breath she looked back at Daisy through the window, lying still, and exhaled, relieved she was finally gone. She felt awful for thinking that, Daisy was dead, she shouldn’t be relieved about it.

Daisy did want to go though, she would have died earlier, she should have died earlier, if it weren’t for Ruby’s intervention. She could have gone peacefully in her own home but instead she had this, a cold, unfamiliar room in the ED, surrounded by strangers and beeping machines.

Ruby took another deep breath and looked one more time at Daisy before she turned and walked quickly away from the door. Looking down at her shoes and the image of Daisy’s body still on her mind, Ruby walked right into someone’s chest.

“Sorry!” she said, internally cursing herself for messing up again. She looked up from the green scrubs to face the red headed doctor that snapped at Eddie earlier.

“Don’t worry about it, I wasn’t looking where I was going,” Bea said. Seeing it was the new paramedic, she forced herself to deliver a kind smile despite how upset she felt after her conversation with Alicia. Her eyes widened as she focused on Ruby and saw blood. “Are you okay?”

“Yes,” Ruby replied. The doctor was staring at her, looking concerned. “Wait, why did you ask me that?”

Bea pointed to Ruby’s face. “Your nose is bleeding.”

“Oh!” Ruby suddenly became aware of warmth on her lip. “Oh, it must have started again.” She went to wipe it with her hand but the doctor touched her arm and stopped her.

“Come on, there’s tissues over here,” Bea said and she led Ruby over to the counter in the centre of the ED. She reached over a stack of files, pulled out a box of tissues and offered them to Ruby.

“Thank you,” Ruby said, pressing a wad of tissue to her nose. “Sorry, I don’t know your name.”

“We haven’t been formally introduced. Ruby right? I’m Bea.” Bea put out her hand and Ruby shook it, feeling awkward because Bea was examining her face curiously.

“Did you hurt yourself or does this just happen to you?” Bea asked, leaning against the counter.

“I got punched in the face this morning,” Ruby replied.

“Oh!” Bea said, surprised. It wasn’t funny but she found it hard to suppress a smile after hearing Ruby’s deadpan tone. “First day and you’ve already got enemies!”

Ruby could have told Bea how right she was about that. “A patient punched me. When he woke up from an overdose.”

Bea curbed her amusement and nodded. “You know they do tell you to watch out for that in training.”

“Yeah, I forgot,” Ruby said, wincing as she pressed too hard on her nose. “It was my first call, I guess I was overexcited.”

Bea straightened up, noticing Ruby’s discomfort she slipped straight into doctor mode. “I can take a look at that for you if you’d like?”

“Thanks, there’s no need. Eddie checked me over earlier.”

Bea stiffened at the mention of Eddie’s name. “Right.”

“Did he do something?” Ruby asked without thinking. “The way you spoke earlier it sounded like-”

“It wasn’t very professional. I’m sorry about that,” Bea said. She tried to hide it but she sounded strained, and Ruby felt like she had messed up once again by asking questions.

Ruby felt weird now about making friends with Eddie. How Dr. Munroe acted earlier had to have some explanation, how Bea looked now made her question it further, and she remembered some part of herself warning against Eddie that went beyond her usual anxiety around new people. He was friendly, he made her feel relaxed and that sense went away after talking to him a while, now Ruby wondered if she should have paid more attention to it. Eddie being the only friend she made that day wasn’t a reason to trust him.

“Has the bleeding stopped?” Bea asked. She could tell it had but Ruby had gone quiet and the mascara under her eyes told Bea she probably shouldn’t let Ruby get too far into her own head.

“Um…” Ruby pressed a new tissue to her nose, took it away and found it clean. “Yeah, it has. Is there a bruise? I haven’t had a chance to check.”

Bea peered at Ruby’s face and shook her head. “Nope, you look great!”

“Well, that’s lucky,” Ruby said with a small smile.

“Well,” Bea said, shrugging. “I’d maybe give it twenty-four hours before you celebrate. Does it hurt much?”

“Not really,” Ruby said even though her face was still quite sore. She felt like Bea could tell she was lying, and Bea could, she saw Ruby’s eye twitch as she touched the bridge of her nose.

“On the bright side,” Bea said lightly, “after being punched on your first call things can only get better from here, right? It makes a great story anyhow.”

“I really hope so,” Ruby responded. She wished getting punched by a drug addict was the worst thing that happened that day.

Bea heard the exhaustion in Ruby’s voice and knew there was more behind it, though she only knew parts of what had happened in the ED that day, and only because she was keeping an eye on Alicia. She didn’t want to overstep but it looked like Ruby could use a friend. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

Ruby met Bea’s patient gaze and felt like she could tell her everything on her mind right now, but they did only just meet. “I just messed up...made a lot of mistakes today.”

“Tell me about it,” Bea said, leaning a little closer towards Ruby.

Ruby looked at her, unsure.

Bea sensed her hesitation. “Really, I’m listening,” she said sincerely.

Ruby knew she could trust Bea, she felt comfortable with her as soon as they started talking, a rare experience for her. She sighed, flipping through her recollection of the day’s events. “Well, got punched first, the guy who did it probably overdosed because he ran away before he could get any more treatment… called the fire brigade to get a patient off his roof when Sam and Iain thought we could do it on our own… that handover, which you witnessed.” Ruby cringed at the memory of all those faces watching her.

“That wasn’t so bad actually!” Bea said. She was lying, it was like watching a car crash listening to Ruby tell them every detail while they waited to actually treat the patient, but that was the last thing Ruby needed to hear. “It was thorough, thoroughs good! I’m a big fan of thorough.”

“You’re really nice but I know it took too long, and you didn’t need to know every little thing. Public speaking just makes me nervous.”

Bea smiled. “What else?”

“Told a pregnant woman her husband was paralysed.”

“Think I heard about that,” Bea said.

“She asked me straight out what was wrong and made me tell her, I couldn’t just lie to her!”

“It’s alright, I get it.”

“That wasn’t even the worst part.” Ruby nodded towards the doors behind which Daisy lay. “That patient, Daisy, she had a DNR. I resuscitated her.”

Bea looked through the window and saw a body covered with a sheet. She looked back at Ruby and waited for her to go on.

Ruby glanced at Bea. “Sam and Iain kept telling me to give up but I needed to see the DNR before I could stop.”

“That’s understandable,” Bea replied.

“By the time they found it I’d brought her back. I broke her ribs doing compressions and I never should have tried. She should have died at home, not here.”

Bea wasn’t sure what to say, she didn’t know the whole story. “It sounds like you did all the right things,” she said gently.

“They’re the right things on paper but… not always in real life. Apparently. Obviously.”

“To be honest…” said Bea, “I would’ve done the same thing. It would take a physical DNR or a next of kin in front of my face to stop me in that situation. I think a lot of people would feel the same.”

Ruby thought over Bea’s words. That was the first time anyone had said that. “I just feel like I’ve done so much damage in one day.”

Bea nodded and looked down at her hands on the counter. “I know that feeling,” she said quietly.

She really felt for Ruby. Losing a patient was always difficult, but on your first day, and with circumstances like that, she couldn’t imagine how awful Ruby was feeling right now. She knew how it felt to do some real damage to a patient’s life though.

When she looked up Ruby was watching her questioningly.

Bea took a breath before she said anything. Revisiting what she did to Shaun always brought her down, but reminding herself kept her from falling into old habits and possibly hurting someone else.

“I made a really big mistake with a patient. A life-changing mistake, because I didn’t ask for help when I needed it. I thought I could do everything on my own, then I missed something and my patient paid the price for it.”

Ruby wanted to ask questions about what happened, but she knew Bea was probably keeping it vague for a reason. She looked haunted. “What did you do after?” Ruby asked instead.

“Well…” Bea wondered if telling Ruby this right now was the best thing to do, but she did owe her an answer. “...I resigned.”

Ruby only stared at Bea in response to that statement. The resignation letter in her jacket felt burning hot.

Bea smirked at Ruby’s shock and pointed to herself. “Queen of the snap decision. Running away is what I do best.”

She watched Ruby look again towards her deceased patient.

“What really helped...” Bea started, waiting for Ruby to look back at her. She wanted her to hear this. “...Was talking about it. I needed help to come back here. I tortured myself with what happened for a while, but really... we’re only human, we are going to make mistakes sometimes. It’s just our job is high stakes, mistakes have huge consequences in people’s lives. That’s the job though, Ruby, and you have to keep reminding yourself that we help far more people than we hurt.”

Ruby looked down at the floor. Bea was making a lot of sense.

“More importantly,” Bea said, getting her attention again. “I moved on.”

With the memory of Daisy’s ribs cracking under her hands replaying over and over in Ruby’s mind, she wondered how she could ever forget this.

“Not completely,” Bea continued. “I think about that patient everyday, but instead of being so afraid I’ll hurt someone else that I can’t do my job, I use those memories to remind me to ask for support when I’m struggling, remember that I can’t do everything on my own, spend more time with patients, double-check everything I do.” Bea gazed over at the resus doors, the sick feeling she got when she saw the bleed on Shaun’s back came back in a wave. “As horrible as that experience was, it made me a better doctor. I wish it hadn’t happened like that but I had to learn those lessons one way or another.”

Ruby sighed. “I understand what you’re saying, and I know you’re right. I just can’t see past today right now.”

Bea just wanted to say something to make Ruby feel better, she looked so lost. “Well you’ve clearly had the day from hell, you definitely didn’t deserve it. Fortunately, a day like this probably won’t happen again for a while. I think you can wallow in it for a minute. Just… don’t let it scare you from doing your job. Let it be something you learn from and make you a better paramedic.”

“But what I did to Daisy… I did it because that’s what I learned was the right thing to do.”

“I think you did the right thing with the information you had. Sometimes following the rules is all you’ve got and in that situation, what else can you do?”

“I could have listened to Sam and Iain for one thing.”

“Well, there’s something you learned. Trust your colleagues.”

“What if I think they’re wrong?”

“Trust yourself. I think we all know what to do really, when it comes down to it. You will trust Sam and Iain though, you’ve only known them a day but they know what they’re doing.”

“I know they do. They expect the same from me, that’s the problem, I don’t have their experience. You know, I thought if I just followed what I knew I’d be okay, but it seems like most of what I learned in training doesn’t mean anything in real life.” Ruby could hear herself getting worked up, she really didn’t want to cry in front of Bea. “I don’t trust my own judgement anymore.”

Bea thought quickly about her next action, they just met and she wasn’t sure Ruby wanted to be touched, and slowly put her hand on Ruby’s shoulder and squeezed it gently. “Cut yourself some slack. It’s your first day on the job, it will get better. You’ll get better. With experience, you’ll trust yourself more.”

Ruby nodded and absorbed what Bea said. She had given her a lot to think about. “Thank you… so much. You made me feel a lot better.”

Bea smiled and felt lighter, glad she managed to help someone when she felt so powerless with Alicia. “No problem.”

“Did you get the place on that course by the way? Eddie told me about it.” As soon as she mentioned Eddie again Ruby regretted it, seeing Bea’s face fall.

“Yeah, actually. I did get it.” Bea had almost forgotten about the course altogether, she’d gone to talk to Alicia right after she got the news.

“Congratulations,” Ruby said. “I’m happy for you.”

“Thanks, Ruby.”

Ruby backed away from the counter. “I have to go talk to my boss now.”

“Good luck,” Bea said as Ruby started to walk away. She almost left to find her next patient before she decided to add something she thought Ruby ought to hear. “Wait, Ruby…”

Ruby stopped at the other side of the counter and looked around.

“You care so much about doing your job well,” Bea said. “I have a feeling you’re going make a great paramedic.”

“Thanks,” Ruby said, she was touched but not sure what else to say to that. She waved before she left. “Bye, Bea. Thanks again.”

“See you around,” Bea called as Ruby got to the corner around to reception. “Take care of yourself. Remember to duck next time!”

Thinking of everything Bea said, Ruby approached the entrance. Before she left the ED, she pulled her resignation letter out of her pocket. She turned the envelope over in her hands for a few seconds, then she went through the doors to go outside. With the ambulance bay in sight, Ruby made her decision, dropped the letter in a bin and walked on to face Jan.

**Author's Note:**

> I think that Bea and Ruby are very similar in their motivations and they'd get on well if there had been a chance to build a relationship. Maybe when Bea comes home? (it's 'WHEN', not 'if', keep the faith!)


End file.
